Wannabe
by Aisho9
Summary: Denial doesn't work so well when you live in the same apartment! Bones is shot and hospitalized, but meanwhile her apartment is trashed, and the only choice is to accept Booth's protection. BxB are forced to face the fact that they wannabe together!


Disclaimer! I don't own Bones [oh, but if I did! haha] or any of the following characters. Also, my sincere apologies about the formatting, there were supposed to be periodic line breaks _but_ that didn't translate over xD I fixed them with little "~" just in case the line breaks disappeared again.

Enjoy! :3

Edit: AAaaaaand, FF deleted my linebreaks again. wtf? Hopefully the "horizontal rulers" work. [eyeroll]

* * *

"Chinese?"

Brennan squinted her eyes at him, and Booth grinned. "Thai?"

More squinting.

"_Something_ with noodles, Bones."

"So long as it isn't Chinese or Thai," Brennan said, making a face. "I am sick and tired of Chinese and Thai."

"Japanese."

She was opening her mouth to say something along the lines of "fine, but -- " when there was a dull crack from somewhere behind her, like a baseball bat in a stadium, and then she was spinning towards the ground. She struck the asphalt and bounced, once, with the force of the shot, before her nerve endings finally caught up and her shoulder blazed with pain.

There was a furious shout, and a quick repartee of gunfire that she recognized as belonging to Booth's sidearm. A muffled oath followed, and when he neither left her side nor reached for his cell phone, she knew whoever had shot her must have gotten away.

"Bones," Booth said quietly. "Bones? Can you hear me?"

"Yes," Brennan whispered, her voice tight.

"I'm going to get you to the hospital, okay?"

She didn't argue. It felt awful, and if he wasn't chasing down the shooter, it looked awful, too. Booth was the human equivalent of Lassie, and she trusted his instincts. The last thing she saw, before she slipped into sweet, painless darkness, was Booth's face, fuzzy and haloed, and his voice saying, "Aw, shit, Bones."

* * *

She awoke in a hospital bed. Her vision didn't want to focus right and her body felt stiff, a combination which told her, before she even had a chance to look, that she was filled to the brim with painkillers and that she was heavily bandaged. She'd been right, then. It'd been a doozy of the shot. Probably it had hit something vital -- the subclavian or the axillary artery, maybe.

"Bones?" His voice was rough and maybe cracked just a little at the end, but it was still recognizable as Booth's voice -- barely. She turned her head to look at him. He hadn't shaved, and his hair was sticking up the way it did if he hung his head in his hands. There were circles under his eyes, too, but no coffee cup standing by to help. He hadn't slept and he hadn't left the room, even to get coffee.

"Booth," Brennan replied, her voice coming out hoarse. Her brow furrowed a little. "How bad is it?"

He looked at her steadily, for the space of a heartbeat, but that was all he managed before he dropped his eyes to his hands, lying clasped in his lap. "The sonofabitch hit an artery," he said. "You nearly bled to death on me."

_Score_, Brennan thought, perversely glad that she'd gotten it right. She shifted her gaze to the side, where the IV drip said diamorphine, and if the numbers flashing in red were right, her blood pressure was low but steady.

"You scared the shit out of me, Bones," Booth said, and squeezed her hand briefly before leaving the room. She saw as he turned into the hall that he was pressing the back of his hand to his eyes. This was very moving, and she might have found time to be seriously affected if Angela and Sweets hadn't rushed into the room, followed shortly by Cam and the others. She expected them to all begin talking at once, but her calculation of their projected behavior was clearly off somehow, because they stood and stared. Angela looked pale, very pale, and Brennan began to worry that she might be getting sick.

"Where did Booth go?" Brennan asked, when no one else spoke.

Cam cleared her throat nervously. "He, uh, went to go get some coffee."

Brennan nodded. This sounded appropriate, given the lack of coffee in the room.

"He's had a long night, poor guy," Angela agreed, an addition which caused Brennan to rethink the classification of Booth's initial comments. She'd assumed that he was over exaggerating -- he was prone to it -- but given the gravity of her friends, she began to think perhaps he'd been serious.

"Booth said you're doing better," Sweets spoke up, with a tentative glance out the door, as if he were waiting for something. "Out of danger, I think were his words."

Brennan found herself irrationally worried about Booth's whereabouts. She wasn't focusing with any real success on any of their faces, and her thoughts were lacking in their usual sharpness. She felt -- blurred. Out of sorts. "Where's Booth?" Brennan said again. They all exchanged glances. The beeping heart monitor's rhythm grew frantic, and the pain in her shoulder seemed to quadruple, only disorientating her more.

"Honey, shh," Angela said, coming to her side and putting a quieting hand on her arm. "Booth's fine, he's just getting coffee down the hall. Do you need anything?"

Brennan barely heard her. Her shoulder hurt more than anything in the world -- nothing mattered -- she saw Booth's face again, indistinct, and she said aloud, "_Booth_," but he didn't respond. Black began to crowd her vision, the beeping in the room frenzied and wild.

"Someone go get Booth!" Angela hissed, but to Brennan, her words were far away and muted.

Someone had shot at her, she recalled. Her memories seemed to be disintegrating beneath the wave of pain. Had they shot at him, too? Or had he been shooting at them? She hadn't looked at him closely enough -- had he been shot? Was he all right?

"Bones," Booth's voice said, and his hand touched her cheek.

"Booth," Brennan replied reflexively. "Where did you go?"

"Bathroom." The bed creaked as he sat down. "And after that I planned to visit the coffeemaker, but I didn't even make it to the end of the hall."

There was something important she'd observed, or meant to say, but she couldn't recall it for the world. She looked at him, doing her best to focus on his steady brown eyes, and said in a pitiful voice, "You can't leave me, Booth."

"No," he said. "No, of course not. I'm not going anywhere."

The diamorphine's drip system clicked, delivering another dosage of painkiller into her bloodstream. Brennan took another breath and then fell into nothing.

* * *

This time, when she awoke, the pain was not nearly so awful, and the dosage setting on the diamorphine was not as high as it had been. Her vision did not wobble and slide away into fuzzy, incomprehensible blurs had it had before, and her ears did not feel like they were stuffed with cotton. All in all, Brennan felt her situation much improved.

Booth was not sitting beside her, as he had before, but she could see the curve of his shoulder in the doorway. He was talking to someone.

" -- apartment is trashed," he said. "Her car is unrecognizable. The only place they didn't manage to get into was her office at the Jeffersonian."

"She'll need to be put in protective custody," another voice said, one she did not recognize -- or maybe she did. Someone from the FBI office, perhaps. "She's practically incapacitated."

"I'm handling that," Booth replied, voice firm.

"Agent Booth -- "

"You think I'm going to hand her off to another agent after what happened last time? No way. I've got it covered."

"Is the apartment inhabitable?"

"Not even for roaches, sir. I'll make other arrangements."

"Jesus. I don't want to know. Just keep her safe, Agent Booth, until we can nail this bastard. She's one of our best assets, as far as I'm concerned, and it pisses me to hell and back that someone tried to take out one of our own. Well. One of our squints, unofficially."

"I know what you mean, sir."

"I'll be expecting a report, Agent Booth."

"Will do."

There was a faint rustle -- shaking hands? -- and then the sound of shoes tipping gently into the distance. Another voice spoke. Sweets. "Do you think he'll try to kill her again?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

There was a pause. "Hotel?"

"Nightmare. No. I'll take her to my place, let her sleep in the spare bedroom. There's at least a week's worth of groceries in there, and there's only one way to get to my door. It's not an ideal situation but it's better than a hotel room."

Another pause. "Agent Booth -- "

"Can it, Sweets. I don't need your mumbo-jumbo right now. Bones is shot and there's some sick fucker out there looking to do it again. I'm not in the mood to play right now."

"No," Sweets murmured. "No, I can see that." He turned and left too, walking past Brennan's door this time, and she could see by the expression on his face that Booth had scared him. Well, served him right. When Booth was feeling protective, his Alpha Male tendencies went into overdrive, which Sweets should know by now. He wasn't going to be taking any crap from anyone, friend or otherwise.

There was a muffled _whump_ as Booth sat down in the seat beside her bed. Brennan's eyes were already shut, though, and so she didn't see the look he sent heavenward, or the little prayer his lips mouthed silently.

_Holy Mary Mother of God,_ his lips said, _let her be okay._

_

* * *

  
_

It was a week and a half before Brennan was allowed to leave the hospital, only then when the doctor was assured that she would be kept under constant surveillance. She'd been shot before, of course, but it'd never been quite this bad -- and Booth had never been quite this riled. The shooting was a taboo subject. He would clam right up, and, if they pressed on, break things.

He put her in Parker's room, which smelled like children and fabric softener, and sat facing the door, even though that meant he could barely see the television. Brennan worried about him. He didn't smile unless he thought Brennan needed to see him smile, and even then it was strained. He wanted more than anything to be hunting down the shooter, but his protective instincts were for the moment overriding everything else, and he couldn't leave Brennan's side.

After a few days of heavy sleeping, painkillers, and tomato soup, Brennan began getting up in the morning and wandering the apartment on her own. She no longer needed Booth's help to stumble her way towards the bathroom, but she never went very far before getting tired. Her favorite position was the couch, which Booth, after an argument that drained the energy right out of her, finally consented to join her on.

It wasn't like usual. It wasn't typical. They didn't joke and talk about work and make funny commentaries on the lives of their friends. They barely talked at all. Brennan watched CNN and Booth watched the windows and the doors.

"Are we not talking for a reason?" Brennan asked at last, on a commercial break. Booth turned his head to look at her, dark eyes steady and unmovable. "Well?"

"We talk," Booth murmured.

Brennan's eyebrows rose. "Oh, we do?"

"We're talking now, aren't we?"

"You've barely said two words to me since I left the hospital." Though she knew full well that this wasn't the case, she added, "Are you irritated having me here? Am I a burden?"

He looked so appalled that she almost wished she hadn't said anything. The dull, furious heat in his eyes was gone, though, shocked right out of him, and when he reached over to touch her cheek, it was Booth -- her Booth -- who was looking at her again. "Of course not, Bones. Never."

"Then stop treating me like a pariah," Brennan said primly. "I'm going to make a sandwich. Do you want any?"

His eyes twinkled. "What, no Chinese?"

"Don't talk to me about Chinese."

"No? What about Thai?"

"Wasn't this the conversation that got me shot?"

Stupid. Stupid. She shouldn't have brought it up. But he sailed right on past that comment, and with only one barely discernable glance at the window, he said, "You got shot because you wouldn't go to the Golden Dragon with me, obviously. Tea?"

She nodded, and he got up to go make it for her. She couldn't help but feel a crisis had been averted. Booth was a social person -- to be so sullen and quiet and still for so long wasn't good for him. "Angela's coming over later," he called from the kitchen, putting the tea pot on the stove.

"Good," Brennan called back. There was a pause, and then the pot whistled, and he returned with two steaming cups of tea. He set one down on the coffee table for her.

"They've made some headway," he told her, stirring his tea absently. "In your case, I mean. Footprints and shell cases and things. I hope to have a name soon."

Brennan shrugged.

"Don't you care?"

"A little, I suppose. What concerns me more is _why_."

"Well -- " Booth hesitated. "There was a notice."

"Like a hit notice?"

"Yeah, like a hit. Said some awful things. Sweets says there's a serial killer vibe, the sort that fixate on important people and need to kill them in order to feel powerful." Booth shook his head. "I can't wait to nail this sonofabitch."

"Me too," Brennan said. "Maybe then you'll calm down."

Booth rolled his eyes.

* * *

There was problem with Parker. He was sick, or some such, but his mother was nowhere to be found, so Booth found himself torn between dealing with his sick kid and dealing with his sick partner. Brennan made the decision for him. "Go get Parker," she told him amiably, "and we'll be sick together."

He was loath to leave her alone, and drove like a maniac, but once he got to the school he was glad he had. Parker was bent over a trash can, grey-faced and belching vomit. "Oh, buddy," he said, and the nurse gave a pitying wince.

"This is the second time since he came in," she confided in a low voice. "You should probably take him straight to the doctor's."

Booth thought about Brennan, home all alone, and then thought about the shotgun he left her with, and decided she'd be fine for another hour or so. "Do you have something he can throw up into on the way?"

She gave him a kidney dish and Booth led Parker out the double-doors by the hand, wary of the way his son swayed whenever he stood still. He strapped Parker into the back seat himself, though usually he let Parker do that (he was a "big boy" now). Parker didn't even notice, much less complain, and with something like dread building in his stomach, he drove to the hospital.

The doctor made notes and hummed a little, and then concluded Parker had a nasty case of the flu, but nothing more and nothing less. He wrote him a prescription for some drugs and sent them on their way, with a slightly ominous suggestion that Booth call him personally if Parker took a turn for the worst. As far as Booth knew, doctors these days didn't make house calls.

Parker had pepped up a little by the time they reached Booth's apartment, mostly because he'd learned that the "Bone Lady" was inside. He was positively gleeful sitting beside Brennan on the couch, but he fell asleep before he had a chance to ask too many questions, and while Brennan kept an eye on him, Booth went into the kitchen to make a phone call.

"Rebecca?"

"—Seeley?"

"Yeah. Listen, I just wanted to—"

"Can this wait? I'm, um, a little busy." There was a chuckle in the background, and a faint murmur as Rebecca told them to hush. Booth's jaw muscles flexed tightly. Busy, huh?

"It can wait."

"Says who? You? Since when do you dictate the worthiness of my time, Seeley?"

"Cool your jets and just listen for a goddam minute, will you? I'm trying to tell you that Parker's sick. I picked him up from school and took him to the doctor. No one could reach you, so I took him home with me."

There was a pause, and then the background noise abated, as if she'd turned down the television. "Sick? How sick?"

"He's got a pretty good bout of the flu, looks like."

"Oh God. Stomach flu?"

"One hundred percent."

"I do not need this right now. If I get sick—listen, can you just keep him there? I've got a pretty full plate right now."

He wanted to say, And I don't? He thought about Brennan on his couch and the gunshot wound in her shoulder. He thought about pumping lead into the sonofabitch's heart. He took a deep, silent breath and stroked the counter absently. "Yeah. Sure, no problem."

"You sure? You're not in the middle of a case?"

"I'm always in the middle of a case, Rebecca. For now, though, I'm at home. I don't see me leaving any time soon, either." He waited for her to question that, to wonder why he wasn't doing his usual roving-interrogation routine with Brennan, but she didn't.

"Great. Awesome. Thanks, Seeley. I've—got to go, okay? Tell Parker I love him. Bye."

Click.

It took him a long minute of careful breathing to ratchet down the fury building in his chest. Couldn't she even summon up the heart to care? No, of course not. She was having her afternoon delight a al carte and wasn't about to give that up for the stomach flu. He hated to think how long Parker would have had to wait in the nurse's office if he hadn't been available right then to get him.

"Everything all right?" Brennan asked, when he reappeared, sans phone. He only felt like talking to two people today, and they were sitting on his couch. No reason for the cell phone, then.

"Yeah, fine," Booth answered, sitting down on the other side of Parker. His boy had propped his head up on Brennan's lap, but she didn't seem to mind it a bit, her hand resting absently on Parker's shoulder. It probably wasn't a good idea for her to be anywhere near a violently ill child with a wound like that, but his apartment wasn't big enough to keep them separate and sterile anyhow. If Brennan got sick because Rebecca couldn't give up her boy toy, so help him—

"You don't look like everything's all right," she informed him, with her usual tact. He carefully rearranged his face, but she didn't look impressed.

"Just Rebecca," he said at last, and she nodded once as if she understood completely—which meant that she did. She would have asked him to clarify if she didn't. "Should you be sitting that close to him? With your shoulder, I mean."

"Any virus he's brought in here is already in the air," Brennan replied, eyes on the television. "There'd be no point moving. I'm already exposed."

Which was pretty much what he'd guessed. "Yeah."

"Is it safe for him here?" Brennan asked, still looking away, though Booth didn't miss for a second the way her fingers tightened a little on Parker.

"I don't know," said Booth.

* * *

Angela, creeping into Booth's apartment with a bag of groceries, peeked around the corner and found herself looking at the epitome of familial cuteness. It could have been a Hallmark card, except that the "parents" weren't together, the child wasn't hers, and hadn't even been born in wedlock. In reality it was dysfunctional—but from the hallway, at least, it was perfection. Parker was curled up in Brennan's lap, though he'd kicked his feet out over Booth's knees. Booth was asleep with his feet on the coffee table and his arm stretched out over the back of the sofa, against which Brennan was snoozing, slumped a little over Parker.

Careful to keep silent, she took her cell phone from her pocket and snapped a picture. The dull click from the tiny speakers, though, had Booth awake and grabbing for his gun, dislodging Parker's feet in the process. The boy responded by curling into a tighter ball, and by some miracle, neither Parker nor Brennan awoke.

Booth dragged in a ragged sigh at the sight of Angela gripping groceries and a cell phone. He let the gun's nose drop down. "Christ, Angela. Can't you knock?"

"It's five thirty. I thought you'd all be asleep, and I was going to surprise you—bad idea, I suppose." She gave him a cheerful smile and hefted the paper grocery bag. "I come bearing gifts, though!"

Booth nodded wearily. It wasn't quite the degree of gratitude she'd expected, but if his behavior at the hospital was anything to go by, he wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep. She moved farther into the apartment and set the groceries down in a free chair, gesturing at Brennan and Parker as she did so. "How come Parker's here?"

"Not by choice, that's for sure," Booth murmured. He rubbed his face with his hands. They made slight rasping sounds as his calluses moved across stubble. "Rebecca's off with some guy, though, and couldn't be bothered when he started upchucking at school. Look like he's with me for now."

"Poor kid," Angela said. "Does Rebecca know what happened to Brennan?"

"She hung up before I could say anything."

"Ah." Angela watched Brennan for the space of a heartbeat. When she got to work, there was a sketch waiting to be born, that was for sure.

"Any news?"

It was hard to tear her eyes away. They were too adorable. They looked, for all the world, like mother and son, blissfully asleep. "Not that I've heard, but I haven't made it to work yet, either."

Booth had turned his head to look at Brennan too. Angela took a mental snapshot and filed it away to be used later. This one wasn't a sketch, it was a painting. Oh yes. Definitely. Her fingers itched to take up a brush and if there wasn't a killer out there with a taste for her best friend's blood, she might have called in sick and spent the day painting.

"Thanks for the groceries, Ange," Booth said at last, nodding towards the bag, and she smiled.

"No problem. Tell Brennan I hope she's feeling better, okay? And there are some popsicles in there, you can give those to Parker." She wiggled her fingers at him, and he waved back.

Once she was gone, Booth went back to watching Brennan and Parker. He should wake up Brennan, at least, and get the day started—but they looked so damned peaceful. Regretfully he reached out, grazing her good shoulder with the tips of his fingers. She didn't stir. He moved to her cheek, instead, and was rewarded with a slow sigh.

"Hey," he whispered. "Bones. Wake up."

Her eyelids fluttered and then opened, her eyes finding his immediately, as if she knew precisely where to look. They dropped down a second later to Parker, still dreaming peacefully away in her lap.

"Morning," Booth said, and let his hand drop. "Angela brought groceries."

"Mm, good," said Brennan, and leaned back against the couch. The quiet intake and release of Parker's breathing filled the air, a potent lullaby to someone who's barely awake, and soon her eyelids began to sag downward once more. Booth chuckled and got up to make coffee. Once the brew was going and Angela's bacon was in the frying pan, Brennan stirred a little better, and then actually got up, carefully exchanging her lap for a pillow. Parker barely noticed the difference.

She took one of the chairs at the kitchen table and looked through a crack in one the curtains. They were ugly mismatched things, dragged out of boxes at the last minute to keep anyone from looking into Booth's apartment from the outside. Right now the outside was peaceful as only early mornings can be, painted in sweetest of pastel hues. If she moved the curtains just a tidge, she was sure she'd see a perfect sunrise forming over the D.C. skyline, but for the sake of Booth's sanity and her safety, she didn't.

Booth set a cup of coffee in front of her, fixed the way she liked it, and then slid into the seat opposite her with a cup of his own. He blew across the surface and then took a sip without waiting for it to cool. She copied him. "Awake yet?" he asked, when she'd gotten a fair amount of coffee down.

"More or less. I can't believe I slept the whole night on that couch."

"Me either. Does your neck hurt?"

She moved it experimentally. "No. I have to say, I slept very well."

Booth smiled into his coffee. He knew what she meant. He'd slept better the night before than he had in a long time. Part of it had to do with Parker being there, but he had his suspicions about the other parts, too.

Parker came yawning into the kitchen a few minutes later, and climbed into his dad's lap, mostly out of habit, though if he'd been more awake he probably wouldn't have done it—he was a big boy now, he didn't sit in his daddy's lap. Booth was on cloud nine, though.

"Hey, bud," Booth said, setting down his coffee to better hold his son. "Sleep good?"

Parker nodded and yawned again.

"Do you feel any better?"

There was a pause as Parker took stock, and then a quiet shake of his head. "Not so throw up sick, though," Parker added, as an afterthought. Booth had guessed that much; Parker hadn't awakened during the night, not even to dry heave. Booth had his hopes that this was one of those vicious two-day flu bugs.

"Good, because we have a job to do, you know." Parker looked at him solemnly. "Bones is sick too, and we have to keep her busy. Think you can handle that?"

Parker looked across the table at Brennan, sipping her coffee, and gave a brilliant smile. "Sure, daddy."

It was crazy how much he looked like his dad when he smiled like that, Brennan thought.

They spent their day playing board games, which Brennan sometimes found pointless, and by the time three o'clock hit, Parker was bushed. Booth put him in bed, but Parker refused to sleep until Brennan read him a story. So she sat down next to him, propped his book up in her lap, and read. By the time the story was finished both she and Parker was dead asleep, leaving Booth to watch the news by his lonesome. He didn't mind. They both needed rest.

He checked his cell phone during a commercial break and found a text from Cam saying that they had a lead. He dialed her number before he even finished reading the message.

"Hey, Seeley, how you holding up?" Cam asked, foregoing the hello. "I heard about Parker."

"Yeah," Booth agreed. "He and Bones are taking a nap."

Cam laughed. "It's hard to imagine Dr. Brennan napping."

Booth disagreed—he could imagine it very well—but he kept that to himself. "You have a lead?"

"Mm, yep. Hodgins saves the day. There were particulates on the bullet, and not just one or two, but a lot. Looks like the shooter dropped his bullets in the dirt, or his hands were _really_ dirty when he was loading his gun. Either way, they're dirty bullets. Hodgins is trying to see if he can't match the particulates to a specific area." She paused. "It'll be vague, even if he does."

"It's better than nothing. A place to start, at least."

"True. You all right, big man? Angela says you look like hell."

"I'll be better once we catch this guy."

"Hear you loud and clear. I'll call you when we have more."

"Thanks, Cam."

"No sweat. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

He tossed his cell phone onto the cushions beside him. He was anxious to get out and do something, but this was the stage of the investigation where he couldn't do anything anyway. There were other agents out sniffing around, and his squints had their noses to the ground too. Until something turned up, he was no better than useless.

After a quick check on Brennan and Parker (sound asleep, the both of them) he made himself a mid-afternoon snack and settled in for a long afternoon of Animal Planet.

* * *

Just as Booth had hoped, Parker was good as new within a few days' time. Booth half expected him to bounce off the walls with energy, but Brennan kept him well-occupied, and even had him memorizing the bones of the body at one point. Of course Parker could only remember a few, but Brennan pretended as if this were an amazing feat, and Parker went around chanting "femur, skull, flanges," with pride only children can muster.

On the third day, Angela stopped by again, knocking this time, and delivered a gallon of ice cream for their consuming pleasure. Parker was ecstatic, of course, but the grown-ups less so, imagining how hyper he'd be afterwards.

"Thanks, I think," Booth said, lifting the container out of Parker's eager reach. It was cookie dough, his favorite. Booth grinned at her. "He's going to be high as a kite, you know, and it'll be your fault."

"You're welcome," Angela laughed, and gave Brennan a gentle one-armed hug. "Well, folks, I'm off. I'll call you later, all right?"

"Bye," Brennan said, and watched her best friend sashay out of the apartment, Parker crying in the background for a bowl of ice cream.

"Hey, hey," Booth said, as Parker leapt all around him, trying to reach for the ice cream. "You're not going to get any at all, acting like this."

"I have an idea," said Brennan, kneeling down to Parker's height. She taped her kneecap. "If you can tell me what the name of this is, you can have some ice cream."

Parker didn't even hesitate. "Patella!"

Booth was reaching for the bowls, shaking his head and chuckling, when the window shattered. A little grey cylinder rolled into the kitchen. Brennan barely had time to understand that it wasn't a wayward baseball when Booth collided into her, driving Parker and Brennan into the living room and behind the sofa. There was a flash and an explosion of sound, leaving her ears ringing, but they had been too far from the flash-bang for it to have much effect on their eyes.

Parker was staring at her in stunned silence, hands clapped over his ears. She moved towards him and drew him into her arms. Booth had his sidearm in his hands and was moving forward to greet the dark figure who had followed the flash-bang. There was a sharp _crack_ that had Booth rolling out of the way, and then another that burst the pillow by her head. Brennan dunked down and hid Parker from view with her body, unable to do anything now but listen.

There was scuffling, and shouting, and then a crash as something broke another window, something bigger and heavier, by the sound of it. They were only two stories up—the fall would be painful but not fatal, if they landed the right way. There was an abrupt scream, a thud, and then nothing. There was no way to tell if it was the shooter or Booth, but somehow, she didn't think Booth would scream.

She lifted her head, cautiously, and looked into the kitchen. There was a dent in the refrigerator door, and the table had been tipped over, but it was Booth who was walking towards her, not the shooter. The relief hit her so strongly it was hard to breathe. He knelt down beside her and hugged a trembling Parker, only just beginning to cry, and reached out blindly until his hand found Brennan's.

"Hey, it's all right, buddy," Booth said soothingly, Parker's face buried in the crook of his neck. "There's nothing to worry about. I got the bad guy, just like always."

Brennan met his eyes and saw a different answer. _I got the bad guy … this time._ They wouldn't always be so lucky. He might not be there to protect them—her—or he might be caught off his guard even more so than today.

"Hey, Parker," said Booth, drawing his son away so that he could look into his face, "I have to call my boss and tell him what happened, okay? But Dr. Brennan is really scared right now, and you need to protect her for me. Can you do that?"

Parker gave a brave nod, and when Booth got up to find his cell phone, Parker took Brennan's hand and said with only a tiny waver in his voice, "Don't worry, Bones. I'll protect you."

She smiled at him, and this seemed to improve his mood somewhat. Inside, though, she was worrying. There'd been an unmarked car outside to prevent exactly this sort of attack. What happened to them? Asleep on the job? Possible. Maybe a shift change, or they stepped out for coffee—something. The facts were that this wasn't supposed to have been possible but it'd happened anyway. They'd been expecting an attack to come, if it came at all, from the hallway outside the apartment.

And Parker. Parker could have been hurt. She took a steadying breath, told Parker he was a brave boy, and tried to listen to what Booth was saying.

"Yeah—yeah. No, we're fine. What the hell happened to the plainclothes?" Booth was silent for a while. "Okay. Yeah. He's a splatter on the sidewalk, but I'm not moving from this apartment. Send someone quick."

Booth came back into the living room, call finished, and sat down with them. Parker climbed into his lap but kept his hold on Brennan's hand. "Shift change," he murmured to her over Parker's head. "I guess they got tired of waiting for their replacement and just left."

Brennan had a juicier word in mind, but with a mindful glance at Parker, she said only, "Idiots."

"Buttheads!" Parker chirruped, and they all laughed.

* * *

The second attack seemed to light a fire under the squints, especially since Parker had been involved. Booth and his wards had been temporarily moved to the Jeffersonian, which had the added bonus of protecting them against Rebecca, who was rabidly furious that her son had been involved in a shooting.

"_What_?" Rebecca shouted, so loud that Brennan could hear her even with Booth's phone's volume turned down low. "You couldn't have _told_ me you hiding from a hit man? Oh, sure, Rebecca, have fun, Parker's only sick, he might get a bullet to the head, but that's okay—"

"You hung up on me," Booth growled. "You didn't give me the chance."

"You couldn't call back?"

"Would you have answered if I did?" he fired back.

"Yes. No." Rebecca's voice dropped to a low moan. "You're right. I turned off my phone. Christ. He's all right? He's fine?"

"Right as rain. He's telling anyone who will listen that he protected Bones from the bad guy."

Rebecca let out a rattling sigh. "I'm not going to see him even if I stand in the lobby all day, am I?"

"No. I'm sorry. I would if I could, but it's too dangerous."

"All right. Okay. I'm going home, then. Call me, Seeley. Promise you'll call me if _anything_ happens."

"Promise," Booth said, and she hung up.

Angela was entertaining Parker, so Booth took a left and went to stand with Brennan, who was listening to Hodgins explain how he'd determined that the particulates were an industrial-grade fertilizer, a brand which was used by only three farms in the D.C. area. They considered this in silence for a moment, and then Booth said, "Assassin farmers?"

Hodgins gave an elaborate shrug. "Hey, man, I'm just telling you the evidence. It's up to you to connect the dots."

A deep trill came from Booth's pocket. He drew out his cell phone and glanced down at the caller ID, telling him that it was the FBI office. He flipped it open and put it to his ear. "Special Agent Booth."

"A letter arrived, addressed to Dr. Brennan," the agent on the other end said. "The writer threatens to go after her himself."

"Does it give a reason why? So far we're pretty empty on motive here."

There was a faint rustling of papers. "There's a reference here to a false sentencing. That's pretty much it. He did sign his name, though. R. Novik."

"Thanks."

"Sure," the agent answered, and the line went dead. Booth pocketed his cell phone and relayed the news to Brennan and Hodgins, who adopted identically perplexed expressions.

"I think I remember that case," Brennan said after a moment. "A boy, right?"

"Yeah. Killed for hitting on the wrong girl, if memory serves. I arrested Willard Novik for murder and he was convicted. I'll have to get the file, but I think was a Rodger Novik—his brother."

Brennan was nodding. "I remember that. So—what? He thinks we falsified evidence?"

"Not we," Hodgins said. "_You_."

"Hodgins is right," said Booth. "He's putting all the blame on you. I'm going to call this in, see if we can't get an address."

Half an hour later, Booth and three squad cars were screaming their way down the freeway towards Novik Farms, armed and ready for the arrest. Rodger was ready for them, though. He'd hunkered down on the top floor of his farmhouse and was sniping the officers, one by one, so Booth took a rifle, climbed a tree, and did some sniping of his own.

"Nice shootin', fed," the officer who'd loaned him the rifle said.

Booth handed down the rifle with a grin. "Thanks."

Damn, but it felt good. It was another life to repay, but he couldn't find it within himself to feel quite so guilty about this one. He went upstairs and looked at his handiwork up close. Two shots, rapid-fire, one to the shoulder and one to the head. He nudged the body gently with the toe of his shoe. "That's what you get for messing with my partner, you bastard," he muttered. The officer beside him glanced up, eyebrows raised.

"What was that, sir?"

"Nothing. Just paying my dues."

There was a little smile hovering in the officer's eyes that said he understood, but all he said was, "Yessir."

Booth waited for the coroner before heading back to the office to do his paperwork. It was a clean shooting and there was no one who'd dispute that, not with two officers seriously injured and one of them at death's door. He blazed through the report, though, anxious to see Parker before Rebecca whisked him away, and above all anxious to tell Brennan it was all finally over.

Well. Sort of. He didn't have to be on guard anymore, that was for sure, but she'd be staying with him for a while yet. The remodeling on her apartment wouldn't be finished for weeks.

When he reached the Jeffersonian, though, the lab was suspiciously empty of squints. There were a few low-level grunts milling about, doing their jobs, but no sign of the super-squints. He found them at last in Angela's office, gazing at the enormous canvas she'd leaned up against one wall. Booth stopped dead in the doorway.

It was him. Him, and Brennan, and Parker. He was looking at them while they slept, curled together on his sofa. It was the expression on his face that bothered him. He looked—sad. He was smiling a little, but he still looked sad. The melancholy shades Angela had painted it in hadn't helped, either.

"Booth!" Angela cried, spotting him. They all turned to look at him, and he saw that Brennan was standing to one side, Parker's hand clutching hers. Angela grinned at him. "What do you think?"

"It's … really good, Angela."

Her grin widened. "Thanks. I call it 'Wannabe.' "

He was sure they all saw him wince.

* * *

Parker was gone, returned to his mom. The apartment felt unusually still and quiet without him. Booth and Brennan were sitting side-by-side on the couch, watching the television in total silence. The air was full of the things Parker had masked—or maybe unmasked. When the shows had devolved into infomercials, the televised world's way of telling you it's time for bed, Booth shut off the television.

Neither of them moved.

"Thank you," Brennan said, at last.

Booth didn't turn his head. "For?"

"For—saving me. Like always."

He resisted for a second longer before meeting her eyes, more than aware of the electric tingle in the air between them. "You don't have to thank me for that, Bones. You know that."

"I'm thanking you anyway." She hesitated, then added, "In the hospital. I was—really scared. I don't know how I would have gotten through it without you."

A smile tilted his lips. "You did freak on me a little bit, there."

"I blame it on the diamorphine."

They stared at each other, waiting. There was more, but neither of them was willing to start it. The line had been crossed, was left far behind, but it hadn't been verbalized, hadn't been acted upon.

"Parker handled it well," Brennan said, to have something to say.

"Yeah," Booth agreed.

Silence.

To Brennan it felt like standing in front of the mailbox, waiting to find out if she'd made it into the college of her choice. The hours of waiting for the mailman, the nerves, the anticipation—but most of all the knowledge that she'd succeeded, or would succeed, if only she had the bravery to open the envelope.

She'd opened the envelope then. She'd made the leap. She'd done it once, and she could do it again.

So she did.

Abruptly, without warning, she leaned forward and caught his lips with hers. He sighed as if he'd been holding his breath and, after only a moment's hesitation, kissed her back.

That was it. It was the signing in blood of a contract they'd written up ages ago, a confirmation of something that had gone unspoken for too long. When Booth considered it later he'd put down the shootings as the reason their resolve had broken, but really it was the painting. It was what they both wanted. And they could have it, if they'd just open the envelope—and they did.


End file.
